Same technique. Same angle of attack. Completely different weight behind it.
The caped man drove the steel plate down with a force that made the magical girl's knees buckle on impact. She caught it — hands braced, arms locked, refusing to yield — and for a single second it was a contest. Then her feet went into the asphalt up to her ankles.
The cloaked man held the plate with one hand. He was smiling.
"How does that feel?" He pressed lower, slow and deliberate, like something demonstrating a point rather than winning a fight. "Has that taught you something, little creature?"
The girl's eyes went flat and dangerous. She shifted her grip, dug her fingers into the steel, and with a sound like a car being torn in half, ripped the plate apart down the middle.
The cloaked man stepped forward and threw a straight uppercut.
Even an Amazon warrior has a body. The punch caught her clean, blood burst from her lip, and the impact sent stars across her vision in a way that meant she was half a second from unconscious. She caught herself. Barely.
Across the street, wedged into a doorway with Camilla pressing against his shoulder, Drake was watching.
At some point in the last several minutes, the quality of his attention had shifted. He'd arrived in this city block terrified, which was correct — terrified was the appropriate response. Somewhere along the way, without fully noticing the transition, he'd become a spectator.
To be fair, he thought, watching the green-skinned teenager sprint toward the fight on all fours, body already thickening and reshaping as he moved, this is objectively more interesting than a gang shooting.
"Are you enjoying this?" Camilla's voice was barely a breath. "Have you been in Gotham so long it's infected you?"
Drake retreated further into the doorway. "I'm just observing."
The green teenager had fully transformed by the time he reached the cloaked man — not a teenager anymore but an elephant, five tonnes of momentum aimed at a single human-shaped figure. The impact shook the block. The cloaked man stumbled.
Then he caught himself, and the elephant caught its trunk.
boom — boom — boom —
Three craters appeared in the street in rapid succession as the man used the elephant's own trunk to drive it into the ground. The giant's groans were seismic. The street vibrated. Citizens on every surrounding block looked up from whatever they were doing and chose a direction to run.
After the third impact, the green elephant wasn't an elephant anymore. The boy who'd taken those hits lay in the last crater, curled and unmoving, reverting to his original form with the involuntary looseness of someone whose body had made a unilateral decision.
"Garfield!"
The girl used the distraction — the cloaked man's attention briefly divided — to pry his fingers from her throat, roll clear, and reach for the golden lasso at her hip. High-tensile polymer, the latest material, rated beyond anything conventional. She didn't expect it to hold him permanently. She expected it to buy time.
She needed to know who was coming.
She checked the street corner.
A blond boy was running toward the fight — not with a fighter's momentum but with the focused, deliberate movement of someone with a specific plan already in operation. He saw the girl's bloody lip, the boy in the crater, and registered it with a flash of something in his expression before his face went neutral again.
Jericho, Wonder Girl thought. Good.
Their eyes met across the street. No words necessary. She was already moving.
"You're stupid," the cloaked man said, watching her. His expression was something wrong — not the anger of a fight but something older and more personal underneath it. "But beautiful. I won't kill you yet. I used to be mocked by beautiful women. All of them. Everywhere." He tilted his head. "Now things are different."
The girl's face did several things quickly. The statement made no sense for the person supposedly behind the cape — Superman's approval ratings among every demographic were historically overwhelming. His fan mail was a logistical problem for the postal service.
She didn't argue. She broke into movement.
The golden lasso whipped out in a blur—
And was caught.
"Too slow," the cloaked man said. His eyes tracked her perfectly. "Your speed is nothing. Completely—"
"If you can see me that clearly," Wonder Girl said, shifting her body angle deliberately, "you must be able to see his eyes."
The cloaked man's gaze followed hers. Found the blond boy. Found the green eyes.
Their gazes locked.
The next second, something was different inside the cloaked man's skull.
It started in his extremities — a wrongness, a signal mismatch, the specific nightmare of a body that has stopped responding to instructions. He tried to blink; his toes moved. He tried to step forward; his eyes blinked. He reached inward for the vast reserves of power he'd been operating from and found them present but inaccessible — his own abilities, sitting intact behind a wall that was currently not his to cross.
The power was still there. He couldn't use it.
He made sounds that were not quite words.
Wonder Girl was already behind him. The lasso went around wrists, then ankles, and pulled tight with the efficiency of someone who had practised restraint on things much harder to restrain than this.
The caped figure hit the ground bound and shaking, the occasional involuntary tremor moving through him as Jericho maintained his hold.
"Get out of my body!"
"It's over." Wonder Girl stood over him, catching her breath, one hand pressed to her split lip. "Jericho controls motor function — you can think, you can speak, but you cannot move your body without his consent. Try to use your ice breath and he'll make sure you can't form words either."
Around them, the citizens of Metropolis exhaled collectively — the specific sound of several thousand people realising they were probably not going to be buried under falling masonry today.
The caped man's hands began moving in small, precise gestures.
Drake frowned. "Is he — is that sign language?"
Camilla looked. "What's he saying?"
"He's saying he's an alien." Drake translated slowly, reading the signs. "His powers will break free eventually. We should—" He straightened. "Yeah. We should go."
Cyborg had limped back to vertical, taking stock of the damage to his systems with the expression of someone calculating a very large repair bill. "The Titans have this. You two should clear the area."
A man on crutches had appeared at Cyborg's side — unhurried, moving carefully, making his way to the centre of the battlefield with the specific gravity of someone who has already decided what happens next.
"There's no need to concern yourselves with containment," he said, his voice carrying without effort. He looked at the bound, trembling figure on the ground. "Securing the person who caused this is straightforward." He paused. "Because he isn't Superman."
The caped man's head snapped up.
"I AM SUPERMAN!"
Silence on the street.
The man on crutches looked at him for a long moment.
"No," he said quietly. "You're not."
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